at the top of the show, by tradition, we asked you, why are you awake? producer john tower has your answers. john. >> maddy writes, i'm awake because my five cats woke me up. i'd like to see the federal government try to take my tabbies away from me. >> this could go national. cat owners of the world beware, four-cat maximum. threatens all of our liberty. thank you, john. on "morning joe" coming up right now, the fiscal cliff. thanks for watching. the sum total of all the budget agreements we have reached so far proves that there is a path forward, that it is possible, if we focus not on our politics, but let's -- but on what's right for the country. and the one thing that i think hopefully in the new year we'll focus on is seeing if we can put

a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much. >> this morning, a bill to avert the fiscal cliff awaits president obama's signature. around 11:00 eastern time last night, the republican-led house gave final approval to a bipartisan deal from the senate -- >> thank you, republicans. thank you, guys. you waited 20 years for this? >> on the wealthiest americans. >> you saved yourself for 20 years for this? >> while postponing automatic spending cuts for two months. >> joe is bitter. >> i am bitter. >> i would be. >> seriously, could the republican party have mismanaged this any worse? >> the package preserves bush air ya tax cuts for individuals earning less than $400,000 and households earning less than $250,000. it also extends unemployment benefits for a year. good morning, everyone. welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, january 2nd.

with us on set, we have the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. we have former adviser to the bush administration and romney campaign, dan senor. this is going to be fun. >> yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. paul ryan's guy. >> aye, aye, aye. >> mr. i'm going to vote to raise taxes. >> mr. vote responsibly. we'll get to that. we'll get to that. >> $4 trillion more in debt. you know, if you take paul ryan's vote last night, plus the medicare, drug benefit plan, that's $11 trillion in new debt that paul ryan's voted for. >> yeah. >> suddenly, you know what? he's off the top of my list as a fiscal hawk because he has been a part of adding $11 trillion to the national debt, but we'll talk about it. >> could be a strong candidate for president in 2016, as a democrat. >> as a democrat. >> oh! >> $11 trillion paul ryan has

now contributed to the national debt. $7 trillion in the medicare drug benefit plan, $4 trillion last night, passes the -- this is like saving yourself -- >> i didn't know you were so touchy-feely. >> let me get this great, richard haass. the republican party saves itself. they're virtuous. they save themselves for 20 years, they decide, going to be chaise, going to raise taxes, and they waited for 20 years before giving themselves away. and they did so last night on a bill that increases taxes, that doesn't cut a dime in spending in washington, d.c., which everybody knows is the real problem. everybody knows that. and third, the congressional budget office scores it, and they add $4 trillion to the national debt. richard, you actually are removed from washington politics a bit. you actually travel the world -- >> lives in the world of ideas.

>> he actually goes across the world and has people scratching their heads. the united states of america, while everybody's patting themselves on the back, we just added 4 trillion more dollars to the national debt. >> on every one of your substantive points, you're right. this is a bad bill that made a bad situation worse. the only thing that's reassuring to the rest of the world was simply that it avoided going over the cliff. so all the substance, all the details are bad. you've got to ultimately deal with entitlements. this did nothing. you've got to deal with economic growth. this did nothing. the only thing it did was avoided sending the signal that we really are reckless and out of control. >> we are reckless. we are out of control. and mark halperin, this is what's so stunning to me. is you look at the things we have to take care of over the next 20 years. and we have to take care of it now, or else seniors suffer really disproportionately over the next decade. social security. medicare, medicaid,

entitlements. nothing touched there. no, it was going to be touched. the president even said, he told david gregory, yeah, i'll do a deal to adjust social security payments in the future, which would save a lot of money in the first decade, but the next decade, wow! that would have made a huge difference for us fiscally. republicans somehow mismanage it and blow that. they don't get that. the military industrial complex, growing at such an alarming rate. we don't cut a dime on that. in fact, we have the sequestration cuts that are supposed to go into effect, which would push off! we always push off spending cuts. we always figure out a way to add more money to the national debt. we did it again last night. >> the president pocketed a lot. and part of why he had so much leverage was because of the deal -- >> john boehner. because of john boehner. >> partly, mitch mcconnell force ed john boehner's hand. >> we expect senators to do that.

that's what republican -- republican senators have always spent us deeper into debt. that's what they do. that's their hobby. >> look, in this round, the president got a ton. and liberals who are complaining are most worried not about the terms of this deal but about whether the president's got a weak hand going into the next round. the president, as you pointed out, has said as recently as sunday with david gregory, we need to do medicare reform. we need to do entitlement reform. when we deal with the sequester cuts in two months, when we deal with raising the debt ceiling, even though the president wants to keep that out of the debate, republicans are going to have another chance with leaders like john boehner and paul ryan making the argument. and i think the president once again is going to have that k n confrontation. >> how many trillions do you think they'll add to the debt, mika? paul ryan -- i had the tenth amendment on a little plaque outside of my door, you know, give to the states and the people. sort of a guiding principle of mine. >> right. >> paul ryan put a plaque

outside, i added $11 trillion to the national debt. >> i swing wildly. >> i added $11 trillion -- >> i want to get to sam stein in washington. >> -- mainly because dan senor is here. >> am i going to get a chance to respond? >> yeah, i can still like the guy, but he is no fiscal hawk. >> i'll simply say that the decision -- everyone recognizes it was a bad deal. it was a bad deal. we have structural problems we've got to deal with on entitlement reform and other issues. there was no way in a lake duck session against the backdrop of a fiscal cliff debate, republicans were going to have the opportunity to deal with the real structural issues. >> that's garbage. >> the way -- >> i don't mean to cut you off. >> i don't mean to cut you off, but i'm going to cut you off. >> explain this to me. we're on the edge of a cliff. somebody says joe, you're on the edge of a cliff. you can't move forward. you've got to go in reverse. but guess what? i didn't just wake up one morning and was at the edge of the cliff.

we knew this was coming for months. >> look, paul ryan has done more to advance the cause, you would agree to this, to entitlement reform than any republican member of the congress. he got the house to pass real structural reforms, premium support to medicare. so he has been working on this issue and others for a long time. the idea that they were going to get this fixed now between november 7th and december 31st after the president's approval ratings were sky high, after he just won re-election, after the democratic presence in washington expanded, is just crazy. this is not the context in which to do this. >> what you're saying is paul ryan is chitty whichitty bang b. >> look at my eyes. you know i love you, okay? i love you. >> this is a little weird. >> you know i do. let me just say this. that's loser talk. >> it's reality. it's reality.

what leverage did the republicans have between november 7th and december 31st? what leverage did they have? in a lame duck? >> they own the checkbook. read the constitution of the united states. >> but joe, every tax rate -- >> why does he keep interrupting me? that makes me sad. it makes me sad. >> every tax rate was a matter of law. there was nothing they could do about that. every tax rate was a matter of law. >> i just have to bring up -- >> no, you really don't, actually. >> do you know who wanted taxes to go up less than paul ryan, who obviously loves raising people's taxes? barack obama. barack obama -- >> he wanted tax rates to go up less? >> barack obama was fearful that the bush tax cuts were going to end. talk to anybody in the white house. that was their worst-case scenario because they knew that meant a double-dip recession that wouldn't fall on the $11 trillion man's shoulders but would instead fall on barack obama's shoulders. they had so much leverage, so much leverage. and mika, they squandered it.

they squandered it. >> does anybody here believe that house republicans had a lot of leverage in this environment? they do not have leverage. >> richard. >> are you hearing me? >> before last night, yes, by allowing it to get to where it got, they got overmaneuvered. it never should have gotten to this point. >> i'm going to go to sam stein. the main sticking point for many republicans was the lack of spending cuts. that is kind of a problem. before final passage, many house republicans voiced their concerns. take a listen. >> there's no spending cuts. we're adding $4 billion a day to the debt. the senate bill failed miserably in cutting spending. >> i thought we were in a deficit crisis. i thought our families were being put at risk by this massive debt. what does this do about that? >> past senators' bedtime when they were b lchleableary-eyed.

>> like $4 trillion. >> some of those members, some of which we just saw, saying we want this to pass because we don't want taxes to go up, but we don't want to have to count for it. how does the whip count look? do we have enough votes to get this passed so i don't have to put my name on it? >> they've decoupled spending cuts from entitlement reform. the question is now are they going to have enough leverage to get what they want? >> i'm so glad i'm learning so much from you all this morning. speaker boehner released a statement in writing, in part, "now the focus turns to spending." and here's the question. "the american people re-elected a republican majority in the house, and we will use it in 2013 to hold" -- >> whatever. >> -- "to hold the president accountable for the balanced approach he promised." sam stein is with us in washington. hi, sam. >> hi. >> happy new year. >> hi, guys. >> sam likes watching republicans beat each other up. >> exactly. i think it's fair we get to spending at some point, no? >> i'm shocked you came to me.

i was enjoying watching what was going on on set. you know, yes, we'll get to spending at some point because the theater changes now, right? this was, as mark and dan noted, bad terrain for republicans, much more than the debt ceiling fight and with the sequestration that's going to hit, there's going to be spending cuts, obviously. but i just want to piggyback on one thing dan talked about which is paul ryan and the contribution he made to deficit reduction by passing the paul ryan plan through the house. i agree to a certain extent that it contributes to the deficit reduction, but at some point republicans have to realize those plans aren't going to pass, that there is a democratic senate and a democratic president, and you have to get somewhat closer to yes. and i think when we look back at this fight, we'll look at why speaker boehner didn't respond to president obama's last grand bargain offer which would have included those social security fixes that joe talked about, which would have included approximately $1 trillion in spending cuts to go along with

$1.2 trillion in revenues, obviously, they didn't want to do that. >> mika, young sam stein, he's wise beyond his years. hey, dan, seriously, i'm going to have to ask you, we've got a lot of people, okay, that are in the play pen. you're going to have to let -- >> you keep interrupting me. >> i know, it's unbelievable. >> this is not "morning dan," thank god. this sam stein kid. >> it's going to be a long three hours. >> republicans just passed the first tax increase in 20 years. it's one thing, as young sam stein, wise beyond his years -- >> please, tell me. >> -- it's one thing if you say i'm going to draw up a bill that i know has absolutely no chance of passing, which is what paul ryan did. >> okay. >> and then trying to actually go from what ought to be to what is, which is what paul failed miserably at doing last night. john boehner failed miserably at doing. richard haass, they had so many opportunities building up to this. again, i go back to the

president of the united states on "meet the press" telling david gregory that yes, he would go ahead and move on a social security fix. it's a small thing, but at least it's a start. >> you're right. >> and republicans botched it. >> they botched it. and you ultimately have to have things that deal with entitlement reform because that's where the money is. part of the reason -- if not the biggest reason republicans botched this -- is they've gotten hurt by their own game, first the sequestration, now a debt ceiling of government by deadline. and what happens is if you play the game of government by deadline, at the last minute, you can find yourself outmaneuvered. and that's what happened this time. >> you know what i was hoping would happen last night, richard? this is what's so disappointing. now let's talk about the democrats. people wonder why we operate on government by deadline. because harry reid has made the cynical, cynical move of not passing a budget through the united states senate over the past several years. it's deeply cynical because the budget shows what your

priorities are. harry reid doesn't want the american people to know what the senate democrats' priorities are, so they just don't pass budgets. now, what usually happens is, you have a budget every year. the senate passes their budget. the house passes their budget. they go to conference. we all saw -- we all saw i'm just a bill, yes, i'm only a bill. i'm living here on capitol hill. harry reid, obviously -- he was doing a chicken fight or something while that was going on. he missed that. the senate has been negligent for the past several years. and that's why we have this government by deadline because democrats in the senate will not pass a budget. >> the problem with government by deadline, two things. one, as we saw yesterday, the republicans were the ones who put themselves in a position where if you didn't move forward, they would look to be the more reckless or guilty party, which is dangerous. second of all, the one way to get out of this debate about revenue versus spending cuts on everything else is economic growth. government by deadline works against economic growth.

it creates the conditions of uncertainty and unpredictablity that every person you know in the business world will never invest. and that is the real danger of this approach. republicans have got to move away from government by deadline. and if that means challenging harry reid and the president and putting out grand bargains, they should start that. now, they have got to change the context of the public debate. it's got to move away from these kinds of events like the last 24, 48 hours. in "the new york times" yesterday about the era of grand bargains is over, that is wrong. we need to go back and resurrect the era of grand bargains, challenge reid, challenge the president, resurrect some version of simpson-bowles. unless you put everything on the table, we're going to have replay after replay of last night. >> mark halperin, there's new deadlines now in place but also old ones. shortly after last night's vote, president obama attempted to draw a line in the sand on the upcoming debt ceiling showdown. >> while i will negotiate over many things, i will not have

another debate with this congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they have already racked up through the laws that they passed. let me repeat. we can't not pay bills that we've already incurred. if congress refuses to give the united states government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic. far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff. people will remember back in 2011, the last time this course of action was threatened, our entire recovery was put at risk. consumer confidence plunged. business investment plunged. growth dropped. we can't go down that path again. >> there is that. there are things that had to be prevented, mark halperin. frame the battle ahead. >> the president wants to keep the debt ceiling vote out of this. and on the merits, except for

the fact that he once voted to not raise the debt ceiling when he was a senator, he's right -- >> i'm sorry, say that again? the president what? >> he made, as fonzie would say -- he was wrong. when he was a senator, he did something he now thinks is a bad idea, which is to politicize -- >> he only, though, had once chance, one bite at the apple. so the one time he had a chance to raise the debt ceiling, what did he do? >> that was unfortunate. he voted no. >> why is that? i don't understand. >> make a statement. but he now has seen the light. >> today he doesn't just say it isn't a great idea -- it's more than a mistake. he actually demonizes people that would play with the debt creting. >> speaker boehner will be re-elected almost certainly. the key person going forward is mcconnell. he chose to make a deal with joe biden that jammed the house, and he gave up a lot in that deal. the question going forward, i think, on the fight over the sequester cuts and over the debt ceiling is, will mcconnell -- is there a model now where

mcconnell makes a deal with the white house and then the house has a governing coalition of democrats and some republicans? >> mark, help me out here. >> is that the deal? >> he's going to interrupt you. >> no, i don't understand. is harry reid such a nonplayer in washington, d.c. -- because i don't fault mitch mcconnell. what mitch mcconnell was doing was what harry reid is incapable of doing. making something pass out of the senate that actually counts. so i don't blame mitch mcconnell. >> but he gave away a ton. the reason you have the bill you don't like is because mitch mcconnell agreed to it. >> no, this is the way american democracy works. the senate passes a bill. it is a democratic senate. that is a bill i would expect out of a democratic senate. then the republican house is supposed to pass its version of a bill, and then they compromise. what does harry reid do exactly? because he doesn't pass budgets. he certainly wasn't talking to joe biden trying to make

something work in the democratic senate. what does that man do, and why is he so weak that he cannot get a democratic budget out of his chamber every year? and why are we paying him any money to work? why are americans paying democrats of the united states senate? >> why are we paying any of them? >> at least in the house, like paul ryan, the $11 trillion man, at least paul ryan passes a budget. >> thank you, paul. >> thank you for the $11 trillion in additional debt. what does reid do? >> in this case he represented the interests of his caucus and signed off on a deal that got the democrats a ton of stuff. >> okay. again, i don't fault mitch mcconnell -- >> nobody got to hurricane sandy relief. >> dealing with a democratic senate. >> he could have full builibust the whole thing. >> and tax rates would have gone up on everybody. >> mitch mcconnell chose to be a quiet statesman.

you didn't see him on camera. quietly, mitch mcconnell is the reason we have this agreement. he's a great strategy. i'd like to know his view of entitlement reform. maybe he's got some idea about how this gives them more leverage in the next round. >> come on, be positive. it's a new year. >> i don't expect much from republican senators. i love them. i love them. i don't expect them to be fiscal hawks. >> he's so difficult usually so there must have been a deal cut. he's so difficult. he's impossible. >> he gto get something through democratic senate, that is far more difficult than john boehner and paul ryan, do the right thing in the republican house which they couldn't do last night. >> let me just say that mcconnell believes, as do others, that they will be in a much stronger position to deal with the debate over structural reform in entitlements in the next round. they were in a very weak position now. you can criticize them all you want. they were handed a bad deal. the option was vote on it or vote against it. if they vote against it, taxes go up on everybody. and they would own that. >> if they vote against it.

>> taxes would go up on everybody. >> the president picks up the phone at 11:45 last night and say okay, guys. >> he holds a press conference and says republicans are holding this entire deal hostage to protect millionaires and billionaires. and the economy is going to suffer as a result. >> you know what realms do? they do this. >> no, they don't. not now. >> call me, mr. president. and he would have called because barack obama -- >> this would have been a political home run for the president. >> barack obama did not want taxes to go up on americans. because at the end of the day, this radical, this radical president that everybody calls a maximumist and a socialist, he loved, mark halperin, 98% of the bush tax cuts. he loved them. he sees them as an economic panacea, right? >> you can't take too much money out. i think it's the perfect amount, from his substantive point of view, he pockets permanent tax cuts but gets some revenue. >> by the way, can we just say this? >> yes. >> for all the people in the mainstream media that have been attacking george w. bush for the

bush tax cuts. they're evil, they're permanent. i remember on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, asking people, where are we now as a nation? a lot of guys would come on here and go, you know, we still have the bush tax cuts. we haven't come very far. the bush tax cuts are basically law now. >> they're the permanent. >> such criticism from a man with food all over his sweater. >> george w. bush, congratulations. all the people that have been vilifying you, they've all embraced it, and 99% of what you passed is now permanent law. yeah, i'm sorry. what, richard? >> the problem is not the tax cuts, it was the combination on spending on the war and prescription drug benefits. >> there was that. and i thought you called them the obama tax cuts. >> they are. and by the way, paul ryan voted for all those things. i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i'm going to need an advil.

republican senator pat toomey, democratic congressman chris van hollen, also tom brokaw. >> toomey voted for the deal. >> andrea mitchell joins us and "the politico playbook" with mike allen. first, bill karins with the forecast. >> be careful how that advil interacts with the other meds. >> right. you know what? i'll stick to the heavy stuff. >> nice. good morning, everyone. hope you're off to a great new year. let me get you out the door, back to work and back to school for many people. new england, very cold. we're covered in snow. and the windchills, the coldest so far this winter season. we're in the single digits from boston to hartford to albany to buffalo. much of this area going to struggle to even hit freezing today. so temperatures for the highs will be the coldest of the winter. maybe a few snow flurries around buffa buffalo. middle of the country, we are dry. there's really no big storms heading this way. so if you have snow on the ground, it's most likely going to stay there for a while. but no new snow anticipated. it's cold. chicago, minneapolis, kansas city, a lot of locations

including all of the rockies in the single digits or negative numbers. your forecast on this wednesday, as i've been saying, a very quiet weather pattern across the nation. really zero travel delays out there besides the de-icing that will be done at a lot of the airports. and even as we head towards tomorrow, we're looking at a quiet weather pattern. it is cold. we're in the heart of our winter season but happy to say no more big ice or snowstorms headed your way. you're watching "morning joe." we're brewed by starbucks. [ hudson ] we're human. we fall down. we gain weight. and we get back up. strength and determination are human too. so are dinner dates and birthday cake. introducing the new weight watchers 360 program. built for human nature so you can expect amazing.

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28 past the hour. time now to take a look at the "morning papers." from our "parade of papers," the "the newark star ledger." last night the house ended its term without voting on a $60 billion package of federal emergency aid for hurricane sandy victims. that was passed by the senate

last week. now lawmakers will have to start the process from scratch because legislation doesn't carry over from one session of congress to the next. does that make any sense? >> "the boston globe," nearly three weeks after the shootings that left 20 of their classmates dead, children from sandy hook elementary are preparing to go back to class. classes are starting at a repurposed school in a nearby town to thursday. "the new york times," a new report indicate many people whose body mass index classifies them as overweight actually have a lower risk of death than people of normal weight. >> can we scroll back? i'd like to read this. go ahead, hurry up. >> this doesn't make any sense. >> so here we go. "the new york times," a new report is indicating that people whose body mass index classifies them as overweight actually have a lower risk -- >> did that say lower or higher? >> lower. >> hold on.

lower risk of death. >> obesity is something they want. >> doughnuts. doughnuts are the only way to survive. >> doughnuts for all. still scientists insist putting on weight and being slightly obese face dangerous health. >> do you want to know what the definition of oe bebesity is? >> no. >> you might want to look it up. >> i've heard for several years that people that are slightly -- and slightly is the key word -- slightly overweight -- >> yeah. >> -- are actually, i guess, in some ways are in better -- as they get older. >> there's conflicting research -- >> as they get older, it's fascinating. when you're younger, the thinner you are, the more healthy you are. but as you get older, being slight and frail, it's not the best thing in the world. >> could i quote winston churchill here? >> yes. >> you know when he said he got his exercise? >> when is that? >> at the pallbearers' friends

who exercised. >> those who are on a limited-calorie diet live to 720. they're not happy. >> do you know there actually have been new studies that have come out because, of course, this is science hour, of course, but i was just reading up on this, but, you know, in rats, even in dogs and other animals, the calorie-restricted diets do increase the life span by one-third. they did a study on primates. it doesn't seem to actually translate to primates. therefore, people are assuming it doesn't translate to humans. >> just read this story because you want to have it in context. it does not mean you eat bgarbae that's out there. >> obviously you have to eat right. the book you're writing, there's some people that actually eat well are never hungry. maybe slightly overweight, but they eat healthy. those people are fine. >> yeah. and that's a hard diet to accomplish in the food

environment that we live in, which is what i'm writing about. >> not if you wrap it all with bacon which is what i do. >> you have a resolution. >> what is the resolution? >> he's going to lose weight. he's going to get in really good shape. >> i think i'm looking pretty good right now. >> right. >> you look slightly overweight. >> i'm doing all right. with us now, chief white house correspondent, a guy who is always just the right size, mike allen. he's here with the "morning playbook." mike, what the hell happened last night? what happened to my republican party? the party of taxing and spending. >> well, they decided that the politics on the backside of the cliff were horrible. they knew that 99% of their constituents would not be getting a tax increase if they did this deal. and they were very reluctant, as you know, for most of the day. we thought that they were going to add on some kind of spending cuts. they were debating what spending to add to this turkey that they thought that mitch mcconnell had sent them. they were debating, do we add enough so that we know democrats

will kill it, a poison pill so that we have the high ground on taxes and spending? or do we add spending cuts that president obama has been for in the past? let harry reid kill it. but they decided that they could not be stuck out there. barack obama has the bigger podium. and they could not be stuck with him not saying that it was them that had cost 99% of people their tax cut. >> so sam stein, why don't you just add the social security fix if the president said that he was willing to go for? what's the president going to do, go hold a press conference last night going, i know what i said yesterday on "meet the press," but today, i have changed my mind, and the republicans are reckless and irresponsible. he wouldn't have said that. >> it might not have worked in the last hours of the deal, but it certainly would have worked in the weeks before the deal. >> and that's the key. young sam stein, wise beyond your years. that's the key. everybody's talking about what was possible last night.

we've seen this coming. for months. we knew this day was coming. >> exactly. and let me just make the point that, you know, the difference between sort of your short-term interest and playing the long game is very obvious with the republican party. and now we've had two cases in which house speaker boehner's been offered entitlement reforms. the first time it was this chain cpi for social security. any raise of the medicare eligibility age. this time it was the chain cpi for seeshl securiocial security couldn't get his caucus to yes. and that's a problem if your party is the party of entitlement reform and spending cuts. yes, you have to swallow some revenues, but the deal he turned down in summer 2011 sure looks better from a republican and conservative perspective than the deal agreed to last night. >> mike allen? go ahead. >> and it's the long game that helped vice president biden bring along democrats who thought that there were some bad parts of this deal for them.

harry reid was one of them. "politico" has a tick tock up of what happened with him on sunday when he saw one of the offers the president had made to mitch mcconnell. he thought it was terrible for democrats. harry reid crumpled it up, threw it in his fireplace. but what democrats were told when vice president biden was meeting with them behind closed doors was think of this as the second step in a three-step process. the republicans won the first won, the last debt ceiling deal. that was mostly cuts. that was the sequester. not many tax increases. this is mostly tax increases, very few spending cuts. the rubber match, the third one, will be the spring when we get to the debt ceiling. that's where democrats -- that's what will determine ultimately who was right, who played their cards correctly. >> okay. mike allen, do you have any new year's resolutions? >> i do. one of them -- you know, i have about ten pounds of slightly, to get rid of some -- >> i don't see it.

>> one of my new year's resolutions is -- and mika, tell me if this works -- to put down my fork between each bite. if you eat more slowly, you eat less. if you chew, if you put down your fork, you're going to not get as hungry quickly. >> you pace yourself. i would give joe that advice, but he doesn't use a fork. oh, well. >> there's a pizza loophole in that, too. >> there is a pizza loophole. >> mike allen, thank you. good luck with that. >> happy '13. >> fork down. it was a frantic day of college bowl games as we count down to the matchup next monday between notre dame and alabama. mark halperin brings us those highlights next in sports. [ female announcer ] how do you define your moment?

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time for a little sports. let's go to the videotape. wisconsin, paul ryan's wisconsin badgers. third consecutive rose bowl appearance. this time facing the eggheads from stanford. first drive, stanford's kelsey young takes the handoff 16 yards in for the touchdown. early cardinal lead. the badgers come back, though. they pull within three points just before the half. this four-yard touchdown pass to jordan frederick. we jump to the fourth quarter, two minutes left. wisconsin bidding for a comeback. gets picked off here. stanford goes on to win, 20-14. wisconsin now, three straight

rose bowls, three straight losses in the granddaddy of them all. >> help me out here. where is the "s" on their helmet for the cardinal? you're a brilliant man. >> scardinals. i don't know. stanford cardinal. orlando is the site of georgia versus nebraska. capital one bowl, what's in your wallet? nebraska up by five. aaron murray throws this bomb, young, 75 yards for the touchdown. to the fourth quarter. bulldogs lead by seven-murray dumps a short pass across the middle. chris connelly off to the races, 87 yards for the score. murray had five touchdown passes, an all-time record. georgia wins the shootout, 45-31. south carolina and michigan. outback bowl. fabled outback bowl. >> fabled. >> michigan tries handing off -- >> this thing has been huge since 1993. >> jadeveon clowney.

south carolina recovers and eventually scored. >> oh, my lord! >> then skip ahead, end of the game. south carolina is trailing by a point. 16 seconds to go. quarterback dylan thompson finds bruce ellington for the dramatic 32-yard score. gamecocks win it at the end, 33-28. enough sports. thank you. coming up next, we have "mika's must-re must-read opinions pages." >> my s.e.c. not doing as well. >> but they've got the big one coming. >> mississippi state. who was the other? lsu losing to clemson, man. that was a shock. >> the big one coming up next monday. >> the big one coming up, alabama. >> you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. ♪

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campaign trail, $1,000. >> this best-seller about problems on the mccain/palin ticket became an hbo movie with julianne moore. and that was called "game change." >> what is "game change"? >> oh, alex trebek. cultural literacy, low. >> wow! all right. it's time now -- >> doesn't know the question. it's not even that hard. >> a gimme. >> alex trebek knew it, in fairness. >> it was so obvious to them, it must have been something else. >> yeah. that's what it is. >> too obvious. >> time now for the "must-read opinion pages." and we have this from "the washington post" and robert samuelsson. he writes, "obama's leadership failure, the fiscal cliff is a massive failure of presidential leadership. the tedious and technical negotiations are but a subplot in a larger drama. government can no longer fulfill all the promises it has made to

various constituencies. some promises will be reduced or disavowed. which ones? why? only the president can pose these questions in a way that starts a national conversation over the choices to be made, but doing so requires the president to tell people things they don't want to hear. that's his job: to help americans face unavoidable, if unpleasant, realities. barack obama has refused to play this role. the obsession with rates is bad policy. higher rates may threaten risk-taking, work effort or hiring but qualifies as good politics: it signals obama is macho. he's tough on the rich who are implicitly blamed for the nation's budget and economic woes." >> can i say, this is an excellent piece. everybody should read it. one of the points he makes, we all talk about chain cpi. sam was talking about it earlier. he said in this column that chain cpi over the next decade would give us about $100 billion

in savings. social security benefit over the next decade will be over $1$10 trillion. so the idea that the president agreed at one point to change cpi and this is the silver bullet is absurd. that's what the president hangs on to as his big concession is completely disconnected from the reality. >> and again, i mean, my problem is that the republicans couldn't get a single concession out of a president who desperately wanted the tax cuts as much as they did. you know, though, there are a couple of wins for republicans here. i think it's a huge loss for the party, especially the house republicans. it's just a terrible, terrible example of leadership. but on the other side of it, barack obama has had this, you know, has been chasing members of the media and his own party down this rabbit trail for five years now. talking about bush tax cuts, bush tax cuts.

you know, those tax increases that were passed last night will fund five days of government per year. five days of government. now the president actually has to be honest about medicare. he's going to have to be honest about medicaid. he's going to have to be honest about social security. i mean, nancy pelosi's always going to be disingenuous with her voters about these entitlement programs. how they're going to cripple the country over the next 20 years. but barack obama can't be that way anymore, can he? because his trump card has been taken off the table. >> he has to think about his legacy as president, and this is going to be it. one way or the other, for better or worse. even by the end of his presidency, this country will be on the trajectory which is sustainable which is going to mean higher economic growth, mean things like corporate taxation reform, free trade policies. it's also going to mean massive entitlement reform. either we're going to be on that trajectory or i think probably

or quite possibly before the end of obama's presidency, we're going to wake up one day and the international markets are going to hammer us. >> they are. >> we're going to force interest rates to go up which will push this country back towards recession. quite honestly, he at some point has to frame this conversation. what worries me, joe, is we now have these votes coming up in two months. this is not the context in which you want to start framing, but we have to. >> what i don't understand is that this isn't a matter of politics. this is simple arit mhmetic. and i'm dead serious. this is our reality. and you and i have had disagreements over the past four years. you say, okay, because you just couldn't imagine him being reckless and irresponsible. you say, okay, you know what? after the midterms he's going to get serious. after this he's -- and i'm not saying that to poke at you. >> i know. >> i think most reasonable, responsible people would think the president of the united states would do what's in the

best interests of senior citizens and people who social security and medicare and medicaid to save those programs, but he hasn't been. why is that? and when is he going to get responsible? >> there are three big pots of money that are related. one is the sequester cuts expiring, kicking in in two months. the next is entitlement reform. and then there's still tax reform where the president's hoping to get more revenue, the additional revenue he didn't get from this round of new revenue. if those three pots can be dealt with together, there can be a legacy thing. the big problem is harry reid because as dan pointed out, harry doesn't want to do anything with entitlement reform, really. so it seems. so the president's going to have to find a way to make a deal, i think, once again in the senate, those three big pots simultaneously and then move back to the house. >> harry reid knows, whether you're talking about left of center fiscal groups, whether you're talking right-of-center

fiscal groups, whether it's peter peterson, whether it's the concord coalition, whether it's basic mathematicians. >> here's what they want. they want to wait till the economy is better. because if the economy is growing, you don't have to cut things as much, right? that's what he wants. >> but, listen. but this isn't even the paul krugman argument which is don't cut now. it will hurt the economy. this isn't a keynesian argument. i'm talking about medicare and social security. i'm talking about 20 years from now. >> but the 20-year numbers look a lot better if -- i think what a lot of democrats are hoping is the deal that they just did gets the economy growing by the middle of the year while this stuff is still being debated. and you can then cut a lot less from entitlements because the projections look better if we have higher economic growth, lower payments going out. >> all right. coming up, nbc news political director, chuck todd, joins us. also former u.s. comptroller general dave walker on his thoughts on the fk deal that managed to add $4 trillion of debt. also, the latest on secretary

clinton's blood clot health scare. we'll discuss the medical and political implications for her with dr. nancy snyderman and andrea mitchell. we're back in just a moment. [ male announcer ] eligible for medicare?

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coming up, tom brokaw joins us on set. also, "the national review's" robert costa. >> good timing for bob to be here. >> with insight. >> we'll ask him, maybe dan senor wants to be around and see what bob thinks. >> bob has been covering this thing like crazy. >> i know he has. what he thinks about the $11 million man, paul ryan, when we come back. humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify.

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♪ i call that a bargain ♪ the best i ever had the sum total of all the budget agreements we have reached so far proves that there is a path forward, that it is

possible if we focus not on our politics but on what's right for the country. and the one thing that i think hopefully in the new year we'll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much. >> all right. welcome back to "morning joe." it's the top of the hour. mark halperin and richard haass are still with us along with sam stein in washington. and joining us on set is nbc news's tom brokaw. also with us in washington, the washington editor for "national review," robert costa. good morning, guys. >> we spent the first hour talking about who the winners and losers were as far as taxpayers. >> yeah. >> and entitlement recipients. we haven't really scored the winners and users politically. let's do it really quickly here, okay? barack obama, big winner. >> yeah. the president. >> john boehner, big loser. >> yeah, that would be.

>> the republicans in the house, big, big losers. the leadership, it is hard to imagine, mark halperin, how the republican leadership in the house of representatives could have mismanaged this process any worse than they did. >> you forgot big winner, joe biden, or as i call him, joe biden 16. richard said last segment or two segments ago, if the republicans had had a different strategy two weeks ago, they might have had a better chance. last night they had no chance. they lost in part because of the pr fight. leading up to this, they have an even bigger pr loss coming out of this. >> no doubt about it. tom, the republicans raised taxes for the first time in 20 years on a bill that doesn't cut a dime in spending and a bill that adds $4 trillion to the national debt, a bill that i think might not scare the markets but scare the people that you've been talking to for years in middle america about this massive debt.

it just got $4 trillion deeper. the hole. >> and what was so stunning to me watching it -- and by the way, it struck me for the country, this was like a bad movie that you couldn't leave. you were stuck in your seat. you had to see it to the end and how it was going to turn out. but the republicans were astonished when they saw the senate bill. i mean, where they been? this thing has been playing every nanosecond across every media in america including youtube. and suddenly they said oh, we had no idea that this is what it was about, and we had to come back to do this? look, i think that this congress has now sealed the deal. it's easily the worst in the history of the country, as they go out, i think. i can't remember a congress, historically or otherwise, that limps out of office out of this term in worse shape than this one does. >> and mika, it's both sides. it's obviously the house leadership is facing a challenge, i think, from some conservatives who obviously have every reason to be concerned.

and on the senate side, harry reid's goal is to not pass a budget, not do anything of any significance. richard haass, it is an historically horrific congress on both sides of the chamber. >> what we're seeing is, saturday, t as a result, two end runs and that failed with simpson-bowles. and now you're seeing all this sequestration and debt ceiling. it's government by trigger a deadline. both of these are reflections of the fact that congress can't do its normal job of legislating and compromising, and it's a fiasco. what we're seeing is the results -- in this case we've increased the deficit by 25%, and we haven't dealt with any of the fundamental challenges facing this country. if we don't get this right, we are not going to be in a position of great power. this is not quote, unquote, domestic stuff. what we're talking about here is the ability of the united states to lead in the world, whether we're going to have the resources, whether we're going to have the reputation.

and quite honestly, this congress and this president together are putting that at risk. >> mika, this congress facing a $16 trillion debt, they've really only passed two bills of significance over the past two years. the last lame duck session, they added $4 trillion to the national debt. and they just did the same thing last night. an additional $8 trillion this congress has added over the next decade to the national debt, knowing that we face a debt crisis just of monstrous proportions, and they have been so reckless and irresponsible on both sides of congress. >> i would agree with tom on this being the worst. i think a couple of things. first of all, if there were more women on the front lines of this, i don't think we'd have these problems. i really don't. i said that a few times, and it got very interesting, diverse response. but sam stein, mitch mcconnell,

he's not easy to work with. he hasn't been the easiest to work with. and all of us thought he was so easy to work with at the last minute. there's got to be something else going on here. is there some sort of second part of this, do you suspect, that actually might give the republicans the conversation that they want? the conversation this country needs in terms of dealing with our debt. >> yes, i think you're right. i think that the republican party looked at the context of the deal that they were negotiating and said that this was really unfavorable terrain for them. there was going to be tax hikes going up on everybody if they didn't act. as joe notes, the reason that this added to the deficit, $4 trillion, is in large part because they erased 98% of those tax hikes. but they're looking also down the road at the debt ceiling. and they think that that's a much more leverage-friendly terrain for them. and i'll say this. richard made a point and i want to piggyback on it which is we think of this congress as historically inept in probably the worst of all time.

but they were playing with sort of a match. going over the fiscal cliff was going to hurt the economy, but it wasn't going to cause a global recession. now they're playing with fire, real fire, when they start looking at the debt ceiling. and if they're going to use that as leverage, it could have us back here talking about how historically awful this coming congress is going to be because that is a whole different ball game. >> the bill passed by a comfortable margin, by the way, but only because a majority of yea votes came from democrats, 172 dems voted in favor with only 16 opposed. 151 republicans voted against the bill with only 82 voting in favor. in recent years, republican speakers of the house have refused to bring bills to the floor unless they have majority support from republicans. speaker john boehner violated that longstanding rule last night and in the process became the only member of the republican leadership who voted in favor of the bill. house majority leader eric cantor and majority whip kevin

mccarthy joined the majority of republicans in voting no. however, boehner did find support from his party's former vice presidential candidate, congressman paul ryan. >> bob costa, let me bring you in here. i'm obviously surprisesed th ee the republicans passed tax increases for the first time in 20 years with a bill that doesn't cut a dime in spending, that adds $4 trillion to the national debt, and that actually could have been so much better with a little bit of house leadership going months back, not weeks back, not days back, months back. they knew this day was coming. i've got to believe some conservative members in the house are obviously very concerned about john boehner as their leader. >> sure, but to beat boehner, you have to have a challenger. and last night, joe, i was at the capitol. it was a fascinating scene. i think the paul ryan story is an important baun because boehner's on the ropes. he can't get plan b through the house. he comes over to the house,

boehner's trying to find consensus. and at the 11th hour, you have eric cantor and kevin mccarthy, the number two and three in the house republican caucus breaking away. but who stands up and stands with boehner? it's ryan. it's ryan, the budget committee chairman. he could have done a lot to come back from the campaign trail and really try to assert himself against boehner. he didn't do that. he was boehner's ally. >> why? >> that really helped boehner at the end. why? because i think ryan long term is just like camp dadave camp. they're talking about the long-term tax reform is going to come on the debt ceiling in 2013 with the budget fight. you're so right on the debt part. but what they want to do now is lock in the rates. that was their argument in the caucus meeting last night. that was their argument on the floor. lock in the bush era rates, do what you can and move on. >> why did they break away from john boehner at the last moment other than it made a hell of a lot of good sense if you're actually conservative ideologically, you don't believe

in adding $4 trillion to the national debt? >> i that i raets really the case here. i cover the house republican conference all the time. i don't think the cantor and mccarthy ney votes are a move against boehner. i don't see a coup happening against boehner. i think when boehner comes up for election in a day or two, he's going to win re-election as speaker. what cantor and mccarthy were doing was standing with the core of the congress. you had 85 republican neys but 151 nays. they're going with the core of the conference. but boehner as speaker, he rarely votes, but he came on the floor last night and voted because he was trying to push consensus. one of the most important parts of last night's whip is that boehner didn't really whip. he didn't go on the floor, touch shoulders or shake hands trying to get people to volt. he urged people to come together if you could. you look at those 85 republicans, you have ryan but also a lot of moderates, a lot of retiring members, every member from the pennsylvania delegation to the philadelphia suburbs, those are the kind of people that backed boehner. a lot of the old bulls, peter

king, hal rogers. >> they knew this was coming for four months. they knew this day was coming. >> and it was an important day. >> and so they come and say that's all we could do last night. of course. but they -- john boehner mismanaged this for four months. the president gave him a much better deal a year ago. he brushed that aside. he could have had the same vote on the house floor without getting a majority of the majority. he could have gotten a much better deal a year ago. he could have gotten a much better deal a month ago. he probably could have gotten a much better deal a week ago. >> a week ago. >> than he did last night. and then he trots out this asinine plan "b" poorly named and even more poorly put together strategically. >> really badly named. >> and he puts that out and completely -- he cuts himself off at the knees. and then he goes and passes this bill at the last second that adds $4 trillion to the national debt, doesn't cut a dime, and has republicans voting to raise taxes for the first time in 20

years. i just don't get how any one person could have mismanaged this more than he did. >> i think a big miscalculation on his part was you get this overwhelming senate vote. i didn't anticipate it would get that much support. they lost a handful of senators. 90% voted for it. that put extraordinary pressure on them to bring it to the floor. i don't think, because in part because of paul ryan's cover, i don't think he's going to pay a price right now. but the president going forward is does boehner want to govern like this? is he willing to bring other measures to the floor that does not have a majority of the majority, or is this a one-off? >> where he doesn't plan ahead? that's what i don't get. why didn't he plan ahead? >> he got jammed by the senate. >> what do you mean? >> i don't think he could have anticipated mcconnell cutting that kind of deal. >> i don't mean to be simple-minded. the senate did a lot of things back in the 1990s. you know what the house would say? good for the house of lords. now we who have the checkbook, if you read article i will decide how much money we're

going to spend, and we'll take it to conference. they're equal partners. you don't get jammed by the house of lords. >> tom brokaw dpaish. >> if you've got the checkbook. >> did republicans have any other chance than to do what they did, any other options in. >> i think it's representative of the state of the party on the house side especially. it is broken up into so many parts, and it becomes less than the whole at the end. and it's very hard for boehner to know who he can count on. he knows that there's a fixed group that are not going to vote for any kind of a tax increase or any expansion of government of any kind or for that matter any kind of reforms that don't take the role of the federal government down two or three notches. and they cannot be moved. even after the election. >> interesting. >> you know what else they don't vote for, tom? reducing the national debt. that's the problem. >> don't. >> they talk big. >> yeah. >> oh, we hate big government. we take this down. they, at the end of the day, they cannot put together a majority that actually cuts the national debt.

they added $4 trillion last night. >> let's stop and talk a little bit about what needs to happen now, frankly. i mean, we've got through this. it was messy. it was ugly. it was not very productive. but it does send a signal that there's a lot more to be done. the president will have 18 months to two years, at best. >> two months, we've got the debt ceiling coming up and the real question is whether we're sitting around this table in 60 days and whether we're up against this kind of thing where the republicans say in order for us to vote for the debt ceiling, wooe got to add entitlement cuts, do democrats say no and suddenly this country has brought itself once again to the point potentially of getting hammered. >> can we have that conversation right now because i can assure my friends at the white house, that day is going to come. do you want it to come now, or do you want it to come two months from now? because i believe republicans may be actually responsible enough, and i will say the word "responsible enough" to not increase the debt ceiling again

unless we start taking care of this crippling debt. people go, we shouldn't have these debt ceiling increases. we should have them every week. >> okay. >> until they actually cut spending. >> if that's the case, then what you need to see from the republican leadership is now, not six or seven weeks from now, now they ought to put forward a comprehensive, serious plan. >> what about harry reid's senate as well? >> exactly. >> they haven't put a budget out in years. what about the president of the united states? >> we don't want to be doing this on february 26th. >> let's do it now. >> that's my point, richard. >> absolutely. >> start now. >> they've got to campaign for it. there's a great little nugget in one of the "politico" stories, they talked about the house kicking in money for an ad advertise to try to come up with a way to sell their ideas. not only that, but the president's got a big megaphone. they've got to have leaders saying here's why medicare and social security have to be saved. >> the president has a big megaphone, the second inaugural and the state of the union.

this state of the union has got to be his moment for framing this issue and preparing the american people for the fact that, among other things, they can't go on with this level of medicare and social security. if he doesn't do that, then we are going to be back here at the end of february. >> joining us now from capitol hill, nbc news capitol hill correspondent, kelly o'donnell. look forward for us, kelly, about the battle ahead and if the republicans can get it together perhaps in the next two months and add to the conversation by getting something done. >> reporter: well, good morning to all of you. i was struck by when the president came into the briefing room very late at night and i was here and talking to members that he did the thank-yous and then did immediately turn to what comes next. it was almost as if his inaugural address is on his mind, that he might be working on it on air force one headed to hawaii because toward the end of his remarks, he began to talk about these things coming down the pike quickly. one of the big problems we saw here was that no member wanted to be responsible for being tagged with having raised taxes. what they have done and what republicans emphasized is that the new tax rates that were put

into effect with the passage last night are permanent. and so there won't be another sunset period where there is another leverage point to deal with taxes. what that does is gives them the chance to really have sort of a clear path to begin talking more about spending and the deficit. the hard part and even democrats and republicans will both say, it is very difficult to make that the front and center issue when taxes are being talked about so much. so not everyone could foresee how this would come together and how ugly it might get. and yesterday here it was so frantic with republicans contemplating, is there a way to include more spending cuts before passing this? that, of course, didn't happen. so now what they are doing, if you're talking about start now, they do have plans. one of the difficulties is getting that pressure point for everyone's attention to be on it so the plans that they are willing to talk about can get some sunlight. the president did say that he is willing to look at things like medicare. he said it in interviews before. he said it in the middle of the night.

that's something that republicans tell me they will grab on to and try to work on, making some structuredal changes that would reduce the deficit. >> kelly o'donnell, thank you. >> thank you, kelly, so much. >> reporter: good to see you. >> good to see you, too. john costa, you don't think boehner is going to pay it all with his base in the house for bringing a bill to the floor where he knew he wasn't going to get a majority of the majority vote and basically turning the house floor over to mitch mcconnell, harry reid and joe biden? >> joe, i was really struck by your comments this morning. because you really sounded like a lot of the house republicans who walked off the floor last night, just livid, fed up that speaker boehner was allowing this to come to the floor for a clean vote. i mean, your comments sound exactly like all these house conservatives, the rank and file. and they're going to make this debt ceiling a real showdown. if you think this was brinksmanship, just wait till late february, march. because almost every conservative member is going to push extremely hard from

everything i could tell from my reporting on the debt ceiling, when the sequester delay expires, they're going to force boehner to have it, especially since he made this vote come to the floor. >> and they should force john boehner to have the vote. i get so tired of hearing people say that it's reckless, holding the debt ceiling hostage, and then they pass bills where they add $4 trillion to a $16 trillion. my complaint is that taxes were raised, although i never voted to raise taxes, and i find it abhorrent that the federal government needs even more of our tax dollars. but if taxes are going to get raised, get something out of it. plan ahead. john boehner didn't do that. and so it was a rout for conservatives, an historic rout for conservatives last night. bob, we know, we've got a debt ceiling crisis coming up two months from now. i think john boehner and the

house republicans and harry reid and the senate democrats better work with the president of the united states starting today or else we're going to be there again and tell me whether i'm wrong or not, bob, but conservatives, they're not going to give in regardless unless there's some real spending cuts that save social security, medicare and medicaid over the next generation. >> look, it's going to be a real internal fight, joe. the biggest problem for boehner is not democrats right now, but he has to look over his own shoulder. i don't think speaker boehner's going to get challenged in a couple days for his position. but he looks at the vote last night, and he has cantor and mccarthy working against him on this last-minute deal. well, that means in a couple months when we have another debate about the fiscal idea, the fiscal issues, he's going to have to consult with cantor and mccarthy. are they going to lead the conference in a separate direction? these are real challenges. he may have been able to get a vote last night, the 257, but in the end, he has a real struggle

with his own caucus. >> i think it was david brooks on "meet the press" saying that the problem with both sides is republicans don't feel they can trust the president. they feel like there's a potential he's going to screw them over in some way and they just don't have that trust. >> by the way -- >> what about between themselves at this point? >> hold on. mika, did you see the press conference a couple of days ago where the president is in the middle of negotiations, one of the key moments of negotiations, and he goes out and holds basically a pep rally and mocks and ridicules republicans? listen, the republicans have been abhorrent in many ways toward the president over the past several years, but to do that in the middle of negotiations shows he still just doesn't get it. >> okay. but my bigger point was that it seems that the republicans need to work on learning how to trust each other and have some sort of cohesive teamwork here, no? >> i'm curious, mr. costa, what about the role of congressman ryan?

do you think after he voted with boehner last night, he obviously has real standing in the house. do you think he will take a more prominent role in developing a strategy between now and the debt ceiling limit? >> definitely. you're going to see paul ryan take a real assertive role right now. one of the biggest stories between the election and right now is that paul ryan has been quiet. he doesn't give comments to reporters in the capitol hallways. he's not taken a stand except when he's on the house floor. what he's trying to do from people who are close to him, he wants to make this budget and the entitlement fight of fight of 2013. that's why he's been quiet during this fiscal cliff. but i think mika and mark bring up two great points real quick. are republicans disagreeing with each other? of course. there's total disarray within the house republican caucus. the most interesting thing is that the one relationship in washington is working that's vice president biden and minority leader mcconnell. these are the only two people who seem to get along. >> bob costa, thank you so much for being with us. first of all, thank you for your great reporting. secondly, can i send condolences right now about monday night?

roll tide, my friend. roll tide. >> go irish. >> tom, stay with us. tom brings up a great point. no northern teams won yesterday. >> northwestern won. >> northwestern. >> first time since '39 and michigan state, did they pull it out or not? >> michigan state pulled it out, too? >> chuck todd's listening carefully. he's our football aficionado. but it was a big, big day for the a.c.c. and s.e.c. and all of those teams south of the mason-dixon line. former u.s. comptroller general dave walker. also chuck todd on how the white house views the fiscal cliff deal and the strategy for the debt ceiling fight now just a few weeks away. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. [ hudson ] at weight watchers when we look back at what our members have accomplished in the past 50 years, it's pretty amazing.

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no spending cuts, we're adding $4 billion a day to the

debt. the senate bill failed miserably in cutting spending. >> i thought we were in a deficit crisis. i thought our families were being put at risk by this massive debt. what does this do about that? >> it was way past those senators' bedtime when they were reading it. we're trying to fill in the gap where they may have missed a few things. >> i think it may be unre unreasonable for senator reid to say produced by sleep-deprived octogenarians is what we should adopt in a few hours. >> sleep-deprived octogenarians. welcome back to "morning joe." everyone does look very tired, but joining us now from washington, we have -- >> it's exhausting raising the national debt by $4 trillion. >> it should be. i don't know how that happened. >> in a single vote through a republican congress. >> i agree with what happened with taxes, but it was supposed to be a package. there was a deadline, a doomsday

deadline, set up by the president and republicans and everybody involved there, set up so they could come to something that was constructive on both sides. >> i agree. with us now, nbc chief white house correspondent and host of "the daily rundown," chuck todd. and here wearing his alabama vest, the ceo of the comeback america initiative and former comptroller of the united states, david walker. >> it's symbolic that we're still drowning in red ink. >> $4 trillion. tom brokaw brought up something fascinating that has absolutely nothing to do with this which is why i'm going to bring it up right now. the award for 2012 for the worst time management in a football game goes to -- >> lsu and les miles. >> les miles. chuck todd, did you see what -- >> epic. epic. >> les miles, after this year's

alabama/lsu showdown, i talked to madeline peters, big lsu fan, and i said can you thank les for us? because he botched that, too. some of the worst coaching at the end of the game, les miles. this game against clemson was unbelievable. >> it sort of finally caught up with him. he plays these games all the time. clemson never had to use a time-out. it was unbelievable. they ended up with the ball with 1:30 left with three time-outs. but you know, to go to tom's point right before the break about just watching the southern teams versus the northern teams, it's kind of a joke. what was amazing about the lsu/clemson game is it was played -- they both were so fast, right? so it was just played on another level. what was entertaining about it, the first decent game we've had. we haven't really had a good bowl game yet. >> horrible. >> that one was good simply because you thought, wow. there's actual nfl talent on both sides of the ball, not what we've been watching where you're just like last night florida state and northern illinois, it

looked like florida state was going through the motions. that's all they had to do. >> chuck, do you think notre dame will give alabama more of a fight than people expect? >> look, they're a very well coached team. they don't make a lot of mistakes. so i could see them being able to slow the game down and hang around for a while. but boy, you do get that feeling that you just don't see how they pull it off for four quarters. >> alabama is so fast. also breaking news last night from my espn app, nick saban told nfl teams interested in him that he is not interested. thank you, nick. god bless you. so dave walker -- >> my interlude is over, mika. time management. actually, there is somebody worse than les miles. it's the united states congress had it comes to time management. >> i thought it was him. trying to time the segment. >> so dave, in the last lame duck session, congress added $4 trillion to the national debt. in this lame duck session, they

add $4 trillion more to the national debt. it's reprehensible. >> well, it is. but i think we have to really look at how we keep score. what we really need to focus on is debt as a percentage of the economy. let me give you an example. based upon this fiscal cliff deal, if you look at current policy, it saved $600 billion. if you look at current law, it added $4 trillion, all right? so people can play a lot of games. what we need to focus on is debt as a percentage of the economy. yesterday it was a "b" on taxes. it was an "f" on spending. and they kicked the can with regard to the drivers of our structural deficits. frankly, there was a leadership failure in the executive branch, in the senate and in the house. they've known for over 500 days that this day was coming, and everybody put all their chips on the table for the elections in november. and they didn't have much time to do anything after that. we're going to see a big battle over spending as part of the

debt ceiling limit and the cr. but what we need to have is we need to learn from history, and we need to learn from others. bill clinton did a meaningful citizen education engagement campaign in '98. i was part of it. in order to try to help make social security reform happen. we need to learn from that. we need to learn from the work that we've done, the comeback america initiative over the last several months and engage in a meaningful citizen education effort to get a grand bargain because the people are way ahead of the politicians. our problem is primarily a spending problem. i'm here to tell you there's going to have to be more revenues, and you're not going to be able to cut it off at people making $400,000 or even $250,000 or more. >> chuck todd, explain what happened here because it seems like this deal signifies much more of the same, which is not good, something tom was talking about, and how this congress just is poor in its ability to get anything done. and quite frankly, the only way to get action on anything is to

politically corner a certain sector of a party. >> right. >> instead of to actually work together and figure -- there were supposed to be two things in this deal, and they came up with the same old thing. wow! >> yeah, they only came up with the one. you know, i don't know if, in this environment -- and when i say "environment," i mean sort of where we are in our political culture. i throw the media in there, too. that i don't think you can do big deals anymore. you can't do the old, if you just make the deal bigger, everybody will join hands and jump off together, whether that was -- i just don't think that's possible anymore. so i think -- i can tell you this. where the white house believes they're going to end up doing is that everything is going to be piecemeal now. if you look back, that's all that's been able to be done, right? is that you can't -- because every time -- it's this delegate act, every time you try to do something big and you raise taxes over here, you lose this part of the party. if you do too much entitlements of the republican party, then you lose this part of the

democratic party. and while that all seems -- while we can logically and rationally make it happen, it just can't be done. so i think everything is going to be piecemeal, very small. it's the only -- it's the only way to sort of keep the economy from getting totally messed up by washington. >> dan senor, then they may never get to spending. they can choose what they want to get to. >> it's even worse than before. what chuck is saying it's true, it's going to have a poisonous impact on a whole range of issues, not just fiscal issues. how will we deal with immigration reform, with the gun-control debate? all these issues, if the environment gets poisoned every two months on all these other issues i'm talking about, it's going to require both sides to give. and it sounds to me like there's not going to be a very giving environment. >> tom? >> well, sitting here listening to chuck and looking at the reality of what we've been through the last several days, tonight i'm doing a profile of angus king, the governor of maine, who's coming down, independent fiscally

conservative, socially progressive. he says talking to all the new members of the senate, there are not that many, obviously. one big message -- and we all know this from the country -- is get this done. start talking to each other. work together in some fashion. and it's just inexplicable to me how they can resist that as long as they have within the beltway. you wanted to weigh in here on something. >> there were three mandates from the election. one, president obama had a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy. secondly, the house republicans had a mandate to cut spending, all right? and thirdly, the american people gave everybody a mandate to start solving problems. look, chuck must be wrong on this, all right? i have respect, check, but we need to make sure that what he predicts is not true. but the only way that that's going to happen is if you change how you play in the game. and what has to happen is the president has to use the bull y pulpit to go directly to the american facts with the truth, the tough choices. that people are willing to

accept tough choices on insurance programs, taxes, defense and other spending if it's part of a comprehensive plan they deem to be fair. and i absolutely believe we can get more progress with more rather than less. >> the bigger actually the better. >> joe -- well, it should be, of course. >> it gives cover for more -- >> exactly. >> i'm just telling you what we've learned. the political reality is, you need to have someone in leadership that is willing to -- i don't think john boehner is willing to make sort of a tough deal where he's going to -- where he's got to sell it to his conference. i don't think he feels in a comfortable place, that's fine. if i were the president, i would sit here and say then let me negotiate with paul ryan, you know. if paul ryan, mitch mcconnell, joe biden, the president and do that. and make that -- and maybe take david's idea, go through the country. you know, i'm thinking about the -- remember when clinton and gingrich went up to new hampshire and would have these.

you know, clinton was playing to newt's ego, knew that newt would take him up on it, let's do those things. but it actually did sort of help forge a relationship. if i'm the president, if boehner won't do it, fine. and i don't think he's got the standing to do it. give me paul ryan. >> okay. sam stein. >> yeah, i mean, i think chuck's right already. if you look at what's happened over the past couple years, we've done a piecemeal approach to deficit reduction. the first was obviously raising the debt ceiling in 2011 which led to $1 trillion in reduced spending levels. and now we have $600 billion in revenue. it's not enough, obviously, if you're a deficit hawk, but we're doing it in a piecemeal approach. and i have a question for mr. walker which is the debt ceiling that needs to be raised in approximately two months' time, do you really see that as a legitimate leverage point? is it, you know, acceptable for the country to possibly or flirt with the idea of not raising the debt ceiling? >> my personal view is we shouldn't have a debt ceiling limit. and as part of a grand bargain, we should move to statutory budget controls and a credit

card limit. debt as a percentage of gdp. but unless and until we get a grand bargain which restores fiscal sanity, which puts us on a path to get to a reasonable level of debt-to-gdp, you'll continue to have it and they'll use it as leverage. it's not right, but it's reality. >> all right. >> chuck todd, thank you. dave walker, thank you as well. >> thank you, dave. coming up, democratic congressman chris van hollen, also republican senator pat toomey. keep it right here on "morning joe."

i think it's symbolic, this is bob dole saluting the casket of danny inouye who died, obviously. these two young men went off to war, bravely wounded in italy at the same time. one lost an arm, one was almost killed. they came back and shared a hospital room, it turns out, and they decided at that point that they would dedicate their life to public service. and they became close friends. one a republican, one a democrat, until the end of their lives. and bob dole said he didn't want

danny inouye to see him in a wheelchair, so he stood to salute him. as their lives were about honor and sacrifice and nobility and working together. and that photograph ought to be in every congressional and senate office on capitol hill because they entered public life as a result of making extraordinary sacrifices at a very formative time in their lives and never regretted what they did. end of my sermon. >> excellent. >> great, great leaders. great examples. >> tom, thank you. up next, the latest on secretary clinton's health after doctors discovered a blood clot. the medical and political impacts with nbc's and dedrea mitchell and dr. nancy snyderman. the capital one cash rewards card

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47 past the hour. a live look at new york city. welcome back to "morning joe." now to an update on secretary of state hillary clinton who's at new york presbyterian hospital this morning being treated for a blood clot in her head. her medical team is now using blood thinners to dissolve the clot which was discovered during a routine mri exam late last week. and joining us now, nbc news chief medical editor, dr. nancy snyderman. and in washington, nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of "andrea mitchell reports," andrea mitchell. nancy, we'll start with you. the one thing i've noticed in the coverage here, it's sort of been dragging out, deadlines for information seem to be dragging out. is that a sign that -- >> well, i suspect there are two reasons. one is there was a real chronology to this. she got a gastric -- gastroenteritis, the stomach bug. a lot of vomiting, diarrhea,

dehydration, then fainted, then conked her head. you already have a headache. headache, i'm sure, got worse. and then at some point one, because she's secretary of state, and two, because some symptoms got worse, she got an mri where they got this clot. i have to say something. you're the first person to say this correctly. she doesn't have a clot on her brain. she has it in her head. in that space between the skull and the brain. and the thing that i think threw a lot of us in the medical community off is you rarely when somebody has a blood clot in the brain are put on anticoagulates. because this was in the outflow tract of how the blood flow leaves the brain and was either getting bigger or not getting smaller fast enough, they put her on blood thinners. usually that's reserved for blood clots in the heart or leg or somewhere else. >> is it more serious, do you think, than we were expecting? because there's been secrecy

about this. i mean, everybody's been playing a guessing game. i asked a doctor a couple of days ago after the news broke, a friend of mine, who said, well, first of all, you don't usually -- >> none of it's made sense. >> that's what the doctor said. first of all, this makes absolutely no sense, he goes, because i have yet to hear a doctor call something in the brain a blood clot. >> right. >> it's in the legs. why are they calling it a blood clot? he said this doesn't add up. i don't know what's going on. so help us out here. doctors don't know what's going on. >> well, i think it didn't add up because if you have a bleed into your brain, you don't put people on blood thinners. so in a very simple way, you've got your skull, you've got this canvas layer, and you have the brain. and inside the canvas layer, a little blood vessel must have been ripped, and then there was this slow ooze, but you are absolutely right. it's not in the brain. it's not on the brain.brain, it only brain, it's in this no man's land. but it is very unusual, except

in this kind of circumstance, to put somebody on blood thinners. and that's what threw people off. and we hear she had a clot in her leg a couple decades ago. >> i was talking to an a-team of neurologists over the weekend, and based on what they're seeing, they think they're doing the right thing, the treatment is correct, and the word that we're getting back from the clinton staff, the political family, is that she's on the mend. >> and i think she's going to come back. you know, there's an old saying in medicine, you never want to be a fascinating patient. you just want to be normal. well, it's okay to be a fascinating person, we know she is. but when it comes to being a patient, you want to be boring, run-of-the-mill, and this has not been. >> it hasn't been. and you say people have been thrown off in the medical community. andrea mitchell, obviously, covers, chief foreign correspondent, the secretary of state. she's in the final weeks of -- i mean, this -- for her to be completely out of commission,

and is she completely out of commission, and is that unusual in your effort to cover the story? >> well, of course, this is very unusual, not only medically, but it is unusual for hillary clinton. this is a woman who is the most traveled secretary of state, who has gone, you know, the million-mile traveler, nonstop. and clearly was run down at some point, contracted the virus, which a lot of other people on the plane got. everyone after that trip got sick. and then we were all supposed to leave on monday, she'd come back on a friday from dublin, supposed to leave on monday, that was postponed today and clearly it became more serious by tuesday when they canceled the trip. that was probably when the fall happened. they didn't know about the concussion for a couple of days. i think this is an underlying question. did she fall because she already had this clot or did she fall because of dehydration? that is one of the things they're determining. they have to look, as dr. nancy knows, whether there's an underlying condition here, there are several more serious

underlying conditions that can lead one to throw off clots. but as she acknowledged in her autobiography, she had a blot behind the knee in the 1990s when she was traveling as first lady and had to travel so much. but they found the mend, they've been very careful with how they've released information. and the initial statement sunday night is what caused a lot of confusion, because they refused to say for 24 hours exactly where the clot was located. >> there is, mark, so much confusion surrounding this, and there has been from the very beginning, because they just haven't been releasing information. how unusual is this that the information flow has been so slow coming out of the state department? >> look, the primary concern for all of us at this table, and for americans, is her health and that she get better. we're all thinking about her. at the same time, she's a public official. the clintons probably have a longer and more storied history with the balance between privacy and a public official than anyone else that we've all covered. but in this case, for the

secretary of state, to say she's got a blot and not say where it was, initially a lot of people on the right were saying, she's not really sicking, she just doesn't want to testify in benghazi. for a lot of us, there just needs to be accountability for someone in a position like that. >> and if you say blot in the brain, that is catastrophic. this really wasn't a blot in the brain. so it makes a difference. it would have been much easier if they had just delineated this much earlier. >> they haven't from the beginning, why? >> i'm not sure why. i think it's probably family privacy issues, as they feel strongly about. >> well, that's fine if you're not secretary of state. >> i couldn't agree with you more, joe. but at the same time, it's a call that the family is making, at this point. there's not been a briefing every day from the people who are involved at the hospital. that would have been helpful, however small or large the amount of information they shared with us. if they'd come out and say, here where we are, here's what we

expect. i know she confided to friends, once she leaves office, she wants to get herself back on a fitness regimen. she knows she's been run down, out of shape. she talked about getting a personal trainer, for example, and changing her diet. she's been under an enormous amount of stress. i think the big issue right now, just hope that she is going to be fine, that she'll be out of there before too long and that she can move on with her personal life, however you feel about the politics. >> she's done a remarkable job over four years as secretary of state and i think our concern is, really, because of the privacy, i think most of us are worried it might be something more significant -- >> and andrea mitchell made the biggest point. she's the hardest working person on the face of the earth, possibly. so for her to disappear, it doesn't make a lot of sense. >> reporter: all right, dr. nancy sneiderman, thank you so much, and andrea mitchell, thank you, as well. we'll see you at 1:00 on "andrea mitchell reports." more "morning joe" in just a moment.

>> happy new year.

coming up next, congress averts the fiscal cliff, but at what cost. the details behind the debt deal, the costs, $4 trillion, next on "morning joe." [ female announcer ] ready to mix things up with lean cuisine? try our entrees, snacks and new salads. salmon with basil, garlic chicken spring rolls, and now salads, like asian-style chicken.

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total of all the budget agreements we've reached so far proves there is a path forward, it is possible, if we focus not on our politics, but on what's right for the country. and the one thing that i think hopefully in the new year we'll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much. >> this morning, a bill to avert the fiscal cliff awaits president obama's feature.

around 11:00 eastern time last night, the republican-led house gave final approval to a bipartisan deal with the senate -- >> thank you, republicans. thank you, guys! >> -- that will raise taxes on the wealthiest americans. >> you waited 20 years for that? you saved yourself 20 years for this? seriously? >> while postponing automatic spending cuts for two months. >> joe is bitter. >> i am bitter. >> seriously, could the republican party have mismanaged this any worse? >> the package preserves bush-era tax cuts for individuals earning less than $400,000 and households earning less than $450,000. it also extends unemployment benefits for a year. good morning, everyone. welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, january 2nd. with us on set, we have the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. we have former adviser to the bush administration and romney campaign, dan seymour. this is going to be fun. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. paul ryan's guy, mr. i'm going to vote to raise taxes.

>> mr. vote responsibly. but we'll get to that. >> raise $4 trillion more in debt. you know, if you take paul ryan's vote last night plus the medicare drug benefit plan, that's $11 trillion -- >> we'll come back to that. >> -- that paul ryan's voted for. suddenly, he's off the top of my list as fiscal hawk, because he has been a part of adding $11 trillion to the national debt. but we'll talk about that. >> could be a strong candidate for president in 2016, as a democrat. >> as a democrat! >> oh, my god! >> $11 trillion, paul ryan has now contributed to the national debt. $7 trillion in the medicare drug benefit plan. $4 trillion last night. passes the -- this is like saving yourself -- >> i didn't know he was so touchy-feely. >> so let's me get this straight, richard haass.

the republican party saves theirselves. they're virtuous. they save themselves for 20 years. they decide, going to be chaste. i'm against taxes. i'm going to save myself for 20 years, and they waited 20 years before giving themselves away. and they did so last night on a bill that increases taxes, that doesn't cut a dime in spending in washington, d.c. which everybody knows is the real problem. everybody knows that. and third, the congressional budget office scores it and they add $4 trillion to the national debt. richard, you actually are removed from washington politics a bit. you actually travel the world -- >> lives in a world of ideas. >> he actually goes across the world and has people scratching their heads. the united states of america, while everybody's patting themselves on the back, we just added $4 trillion more to the national debt. >> on every one of your substantiative points, you're right. this is a bad bill that made a

bad situation worse. the only thing that's reassuring to the rest of the world is that simply that it avoided going over the cliff. so all the substance, all the details are bad. you've got to ultimately deal with entitlements. this did nothing. you've got to deal with economic growth. this did nothing. the only thing it did was avoided sending the signal that we really are reckless and out of control. >> we are reckless, we are out of control, and mark halperin, this is what's so stunning to me. is you look at the things we have to take care of over the next 20 years. we have to take care of it now or else seniors suffer really disproportionately over the next decade. social security, medicare, medicaid, entitlements. nothing touched there. nothing was going to be touched. the president even said, he told david gregory, yeah, i'll do a deal to adjust social security payments in the future. which would save a lot of money the first decade, but next decade, wow. that would have made a huge

difference for us, fiscally. and republicans somehow mismanage it and blow that. they don't get that. the military industrial complex, growing at such an alarming rate. we don't cut a dime on that. in fact, we have the sequestration cuts that are supposed to go into effect, which we push off. we always push off spending cuts. we always figure out a way to add more money to the national debt. we did it again last night. >> the president pocketed a lot. and part of why he had so much leverage was because of the deal they made -- >> because of john boehner? >> well, mitch mcconnell. mitch mcconnell forced john waner's hand. >> we expect senators to do that. that's why -- republican senators have always, that's what they do. it's their hobby. >> in in round, the president got a ton.

the president has said as recently as sunday with david gregory, we need to do medicaid reform and entitlement reform. when we deal with the sequester cut ifs two months, when we deal with raising the debt ceiling, even though the president wants to keep that out of the debate, republicans will have another chance with leaders like john boehner and paul ryan making the argument. and i think the president once again -- >> how many more trillion dollars do you think they're going to add to the national debt. what do you think, mika? because, listen, if you're paul ryan and you can put -- i had the tenth amendment on a little plaque outside of my door, you know? all powers not specifically given to the federal government are reserved for the states and the people. sort of a guiding principle of mine. >> right. >> paul ryan can put a plaque outside, i added $11 trillion to the national debt. >> i swing wildly to the right. >> no, just, i added $11 trillion to the -- why am i being tough on paul ryan, mainly because dan seymour is here. >> am i going to get a chance to

respond? >> yeah, but he is no fiscal hawk. >> respond. >> i will simply say, the decision, everyone recognizes it was a bad deal, it was a bad deal. we have structural problems we'll have to deal with on entitlement reform and other issues. there was no way in a lame-duck session against the backdrop of a fiscal cliff debate, republicans were going to have the opportunity to deal with the real structural issues -- >> oh, that's such garbage. i don't mean to cut you off. >> let me finish -- "i don't mean to cut you off," but i'm going to cut you off. >> my car's on the edge of the cliff, somebody says to me, joe, you're on the edge of the cliff, you can't go forward in all, you have to go in reverse. but i didn't just wake up one morning and was on the edge of the cliff. we knew this was coming for months. >> sure. look, paul ryan has done more to advance the cause, you would agree with this, on entitlement reform than any other republican member of congress. he got the house to pass real structural reforms, premium support to medicare.

the idea they were going to get this fixed now between november 7th and december 31st, after the president's approval ratings were sky high, after he just won re-election, after the democratic presence in washington expanded, is just crazy. >> this is not the context in which to do this. >> you're saying that paul ryan is chitty chitty bang bang. gets to the cliff and just flies. >> no, i'm saying the decision for paul ryan and every one of these members was to vote last night for a massive tax increase on every single american. >> you know i love you, okay? i love you. >> this is a little weird. >> i really do, but let me just say this. that's loser talk. to say the president -- >> what leverage do the republicans have between november 7th -- >> to say that the president -- >> what leverage do they have, in the lame duck? >> they own the checkbook. read the constitution of the united states. >> but, joe, every -- >> why does he keep interrupting me? thatt imakes me sad.

>> every tax rate was going up as a matter of law. there was nothing they could do about that. >> i just have to bring up -- >> no, you really don't, actually. >> do you know who wanted taxes to go up less than paul ryan, who obviously loves raising people's taxes? barack obama. >> yeah. barack obama -- >> who wanted tax rates to go up less? >> barack obama was fearful that the bush tax cuts were going to end. talk to anybody in the white house. that was their worst-case scenario, because they knew that meant a double-dip recession that wouldn't fall on the $11 trillion man's shoulders, but would instead fall on barack obama's shoulders. they had so much leverage, so much lneverage, and mika, they squandered it. >> does anybody here believe that the house republicans had a lot of leverage in this environment. they did not have leverage. >> richard does. >> before last night, by allowing it to get to where it got, they got out-maneuvered. it never should have got to this point.

>> i'm going to go to sam stein now, you be quiet. the main sticking point for many americans was the lack of spending cuts. that is kind of a problem. before final passage, many house republicans voiced their concerns. take a listen. >> there's no spending cuts. we're adding $4 billion a day to the debt. the senate bill failed miserably at cutting spending. >> i thought we were in a deficit crisis. i thought our families were being put at risk by this massive debt. what does this do about that? >> it was way past the senators' bedtime and they were blurry id when they were reading it, so we're trying to fill in the gap where they might have missed something. >> like $4 trillion. >> can i tell you the irony here, many of those members, some of which we just saw, said, look, we want this to pass, because we don't want taxes to go up, but we don't want to have to vote for it. so how's the whip count look? do we have enough votes to get this passed so i don't have to put my name on it?

>> they decoupled spending cuts from entitlement reform. the question now is, will they have enough leverage to get what they want? >> i'm so glad i'm learning so much from y'all this morning. speaker boehner released a statement, writing in part, "now the focus turns to spending." here's the question, "the american people re-elected a republican majority in the house and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the balanced approach he promised." >> whatever. give me a break. >> sam stein is with us in washington. i never get to that intro. hi, sam! i think it's fair we get to spending at some point, no? >> i'm shocked you came to me. i was enjoying watching what was going on on the set. yes, we'll get to spending at some point, because the theater changes now, right? i mean, this was, as mark and dan noted, a bad trend for republicans, much more than a debt ceiling fight, i think. and with the sequestration that's going to hit, there's going to be spending cuts, obviously. but i want to piggy back on one thing that dan talked about,

which was about paul ryan and the contribution he made to deficit reduction, by passing the paul ryan plan through the house. i agreed to a certain extent that that contributes to the dollar like a deficit reduction. but at some point, republicans have to realize that those plans aren't actually going to pass. that there is a democratic senate and a democratic president, and you have to get someone closer to yes. and i think when we look back at this fight, we'll look at why speaker boehner didn't respond to president obama's last grand bargain offer, which would have included those social security fixes that joe talked about, which would have included approximately $1 trillion in spending cuts, to go along with $1.2 trillion in revenues. >> there are some new deadlines now in place, but also old ones. shortly after last night's vote, president obama attempted to draw a line in the sand on the upcoming debt ceiling showdown. >> while i will negotiate over many things, i will not have another debate with this congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that

they have already racked up through the laws that they passed. let me repeat. we can't not pay bills that we've already incurred. if congress refuses to give the united states government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic, far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff. people will remember back in 2011, the last time this course of action was threatened, our entire recovery was put at risk. consumer confidence plunged, business investment plunged, growth dropped. we can't go down that path again. >> there is that. there are things that have to be prevented, mark halperin. frame the battle ahead. >> the president wants to keep the debt ceiling vote out of this. and on the merits, except for the little inconvenient fact that he once voted to not raise the debt ceiling when he was a

senator -- >> i'm sorry, can you say that again? >> well, as fonzi would say, he made a -- he was wrong, when he was a senator, he did something that he now thinks is a bad idea. >> but he only had one chance, one bite at the apple. so the one time he had a chance to raise the debt ceiling, what did he do? >> that was unfortunate. >> he voted no. >> why is that? >> i make a statement. but he has now seen the light. >> today, he doesn't just say -- now he actually demonizes people who would play with the debt ceiling. >> look, speaker boehner is getting a lot of attention and he'll be re-elected, almost certainly. the key person going forward is mitch mcconnell. he chose in this case to make a deal with joe biden that jammed the house and he gave up a lot in that deal. the question going forward, i think, on the fight over the sequester cuts and over the debt ceiling is, will mcconnell -- is there a model now where mcconnell makes a deal with the white house and then the house has a governing coalition of

democrats and some republicans. >> mark, help me out here. >> that's a deal. >> no, i don't understand. is harry reid such a nonplayer in washington, d.c. -- because i don't fault mitch mcconnell. what mitch mcconnell was doing was what harry reid is incapable of doing. making something pass out of the senate that actually counts. so i don't blame mitch mcconnell. >> but he gave away -- a reason you don't like is because harry, is because mitch mcconnell agreed to it. >> no, this is the way american democracy works. the senate passes a bill. it is a democratic senate. that is a bill i would expect out of a democratic senate. then the republican house is supposed to pass its version of a bill, and then they compromise. what does harry reid do, exactly? because he doesn't pass budgets. he certainly wasn't talking to joe biden, trying to make something work in the democratic senate. what does that man do? and why is he so weak that he

cannot get a democratic budget out of his chamber every year? and why are we paying him any money to work? why are americans paying democrats in the united states senate. >> after the past couple of days, why are we paying any of them? >> at least in the house, like paul ryan, the $11 trillion man. >> thank you, paul. >> thank you, paul, for the $11 trillion in additional debt. what does harry reid do? >> in this case, he represented the interests of his caucus and signed off on a deal that got the democrats a ton of stuff. >> okay. again, you -- i don't fault mitch mcconnell, because mitch mcconnell was dealing with a democratic senate. >> but he could have vetoed -- he could have filibustered the whole thing. >> and tax rates would have gone up for everybody. >> mitch mcconnell chose to be a quiet statesman, didn't see him on camera or he didn't meet face to face with joe biden, but he's

the reason we have this agreement. i wonder what his view is of decoupling the -- >> maybe there was a deal he cut. >> maybe he has an idea of how this gives them more leverage in the next round. >> i don't expect much from republican senators. i love them. i love them. i don't expect them to be fiscal hawks. >> he is so difficult, usually, so there must have been a deal cut. he's so difficult. he's impossible. >> to get something through a democratic senate, that is far more difficult than john boehner and paul ryan do the right thing in the republican house, which they couldn't do last night. >> let me just say that mcconnell believes, as others, that they would be in a much stronger position to deal with debate in the next round than this round. they were in a very weak position now. you can criticize boehner and ryan all you want. they were handed a bad deal. the option was vote on it or vote against it. if they vote against it, taxes go up on everybody. >> coming up, we'll talk to republican senator pat toomey and democratic congressman chris van hollen. also "the new yorker's" john

cassidy joins us on set. but first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> happy new year to you guys and everyone else. we're off to a very cold start to the new year. by far, the coldest morning soft weren't season is upon us. wi windchills are below freezing in much of the country, pretty much everywhere colored in with the blue, the purple, or the white is below freezing. the only warm spot left is down there to miami. even san antonio and los angeles has been chilly. a little bit of rain this morning exiting north carolina. otherwise, a little bit of light rain down there in texas. this is the only travel trouble spot out there. it's only light rain, not snow or ice. some cloudy, wet weather from corpus christi to brownsville. maybe that will try to eclipse houston, baton rouge, and coastal louisiana during your day. so your wednesday forecast, very quiet weather pattern. this is going to continue for the next couple of days. there's no big snowstorms in sight. there's no big shots of cold air. we could gradually warm it up from here. highs today are going to struggle. it's a very cold january day

from new england to the great lakes. we'll have another one on thursday. but even for our friends in the great lakes and the midwest, who are frigid the last week or two, i think by this weekend, you're going to see a little temperature surge. i think you're going to like it. we leave you with a shot of st. louis, a very cold-looking st. louis this morning. you're watching "morning joe," we're brewed by starbucks. weight watchers online worked for us. we don't argue much. we really don't. meg usually just gets her way, and i go along with it. i think it worked for matt because i did it for him. when i'm the one cooking, i'm the one calculating the points. i can microwave things. you get to eat real food. we still get to go out. we're just so much smarter about it. we can keep each other in check. going, "okay, i see you." we've lost about 110 pounds together. it helped our love life. happy wife, happy life, right? right. [ jennifer ] weight watchers online. the power of weight watchers completely online. join for free today.

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the fact is, the deficit is still too high.

and we're still investing too little in the things that we need for the economy to grow as fast as it should. and that's why speaker boehner and i originally tried to negotiate a larger agreement that would put this country on a path to paying down its debt, while also putting americans back to work, rebuilding our roads and bridges, and providing investment in areas like education and job training. unfortunately, there just wasn't enough support or time for that kind of large agreement in a lame duck session of congress. and that failure comes with a cost, as the messy nature of the process over the past several weeks has made business more uncertain and consumers less confident. >> welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now from washington is democratic representative from maryland and ranking member of the budget committee, congressman chris van hollen. and here on set, staff writer for the new yorker, john

cassidy. sam stein still with us for the conversation. all right, chris van hollen. >> good morning, mika, good morning, everybody. happy new year. >> happy new year if you're a democrat. >> come on, joe. >> and you see the republican house saying, you know what, we're going to vote against a $1 million limit for tax increases, but we're going to support a $400,000. >> what's wrong with them? >> seriously, one thinks of the napoleon quote that you don't interrupt your enemy while they're destroying themselveses and you guys just waited around long enough for the republican party to do that, didn't you, chris? >> joe, as you indicated, what happened here was that the president, president obama, had a proposal on the table for $1.2 trillion in revenue, coupled with $1.2 trillion in cuts, if you include the interest savings. and speaker boehner knew he could not sell that to his caucus, because it had the revenue piece. in fact, he then went back to his caucus and he couldn't even sell them, as you just said, on asking people making more than

$1 million a year to contribute a little more. so as a result, republicans in the house walked away from a larger agreement because it included revenue. and at the end of the day, we passed something that was $640 billion additional revenue from higher income earners, without the cuts. and so because they were so dug in on no revenue, we were unable to get a larger and balanced package. >> john, there were so many opportunities that john boehner had, that he passed up on. the deal that the president gave him a year ago. so much better than the deal last night. the $1 million level that republicans voted against last week, $600,000 better, in their mind, than the $400,000 limit they voted for last night. >> but i don't think boehner really thought he could get that deal, so that's why he pulled it back. in the end, what the republicans have done is said, look, we've got to cave here, we're going to

fight on the debt ceiling. they've taken $600 million in revenues. the president wanted $1.2 trillion, so he's compromised a lot as well. now where's the rench? the republicans think it's with them because they're back to 2011, it's the debt ceiling, they can define the terms of that deal. >> where do you think the lmpl is? >> we'll see. in this one, it looked like obama had all the leverage. it's very hard to say. the i think the republicans will definitely have more leverage on the debt ceiling than they do on this one, because they don't have the bush tax cuts hanging over them. >> so they can work on spending then? so they can be the bad guys. >> structural perform. they can say, mr. president, we got a deal on the issue that was most important to you, which was on the revenue side. which was dealing with the expiration of the bush tax cuts, in terms of which ones he wanted to have expired and which ones he did. we've gotten past that, now let's get to the real problem. >> i'm skeptical.

republicans have been rolled. john boehner has made one misstep after another. do we really think republicans are going to get it right with the debt ceiling this time? >> i think the president is at his word. he's sitting at negotiations and if people bring up the debt ceiling increase, he's going to say, that's not part of this discussion. congressman van hollen, is that your understanding, that the president won't entertain a talk about that being part of the discussions? >> that's right, because it would be like you or me getting up in the morning and saying, we're not going to pay our mortgage or running up a bill on our credit card and saying, we're not going to pay for it. >> that happens like every day in america. >> actually, if the united states of america just says, we're not going to pay our bills, you know that's an economic catastrophe. to threatening an economic catastrophe is not something that's going to be credible at the end of the day. we saw what happened just a little over -- about two years ago, a little less, when the republicans in the house tried this the last time. i mean, there was a huge backlash. what the president has said, and i agree with him, is he wants to

continue a conversation to reduce our long-term deficit, but it has to be of continuing balanced approach. in other words, additional cuts, but also additional revenue. so he originally had the proposal for $1.2 trillion in revenue, $1.2 trillion in cuts. we did $640 billion in revenue. if you want a larger deal, republicans are going to have to do more revenue through tax reform now, eliminating some of the tax breaks for higher income individuals, coupled with targeted cuts. >> i'm not really good with math, chris. but you said $1.2 in revenue, $1.2 in cuts, again, not great at math, that comes out to roughly $2.4 trillion, give or take a couple of trillion. you guys just put out $4 trillion deeper in debt last night, according to the congressional budget office. so even with those numbers that you give us, we're down almost $2 trillion more, chris.

>> is that true? >> no, joe, you know with the congressional budget office, there are the two ways lines, right? there's the current law baseline and then there's the current policy baseline, meaning continuing current policies. and compared to that baseline, we actually reduced the deficit by $640 billion. the $4 trillion number you're using, joe, you know, assumed that all the middle class taxes would go up. in other words, that's what cbo assumes, and so when they say -- >> well, that was the law. >> that was the law, as was the amt going into full effect. republicans have always used in the congress, the so-called current policy baseline, continuing current tax policy, and relative to that, we actually reduced the deficit by $240 billion, by asking higher income individuals to pay more. >> john, this is what i don't understand, though. we're over $16 trillion in debt. >> yep. >> we've got congress and the

president talking about cutting maybe $2.4 trillion. it's woefully inadequate. simpson bowles tried to get $4 trillion. >> right. >> i don't see any significant cuts coming that will actually pay down the debt? >> we're only halfway through and we've had the tax side and now going to the spending side. the original gain was about $4 trillion. we got about $1 trillion in 2010, where's the other $2.5 trillion? i agree with you, we're not going to get all the way there. if we get another trillion, say, in the debt ceiling negotiations, it will still be quite a big deal over the last two years and be enough to bring the deficit down to perhaps 3, 4% of gdp over ten years. a lot of it depends on how the economy goes. that's the things about all these -- trying to project the deficit into 2020, i don't believe any of it. it all depends on whether the economy grows 2%, 3%, 4%.

in 2000, we were talking about not having any deficit whatsoever. suddenly the economy goes into recession and you've got an enormous deficit. a lot depends on how the economy turns. >> we'll see how wall street responds to it. >> wall street's going up today. >> i've been listening, i know a lot of conservatives are fault s faulting speaker boehner, but the reason that speaker boehner was not able to get the grand bargain was because his members did not support the revenue component of that. so at the end of the day, he didn't get the cuts he was pushing for. so they totally ignored him and undercut him, and as a result, you had that agreement last night. >> chris van hollen, can i just say, from a conservative standpoint, you are not helping the speaker's cause. >> i apologize to the speaker. >> you want him to stay speaker of the house forever, don't you, chris van hollen. so devious. >> you're right.

i'm going to stay out of republican caucus politics. >> chris van hollen, congressman, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> john cassidy, stay with us, if you can. up next, we'll bring in republican senator pat toomey. we're back in just a moment. meet the 5-passenger ford c-max hybrid. when you're carrying a lot of weight, c-max has a nice little trait, you see, c-max helps you load your freight, with its foot-activated lift gate. but that's not all you'll see, cause c-max also beats prius v, with better mpg. say hi to the all-new 47 combined mpg c-max hybrid.

all right. 38 past the hour. welcome back. joining us now from allentown, pennsylvania, republican senator pat toomey. welcome back to the show, senator. >> morning, guys. >> i'm going to read from red state. erick erickson wrote this about you. tom coburn, ron johnson, and pat toomey should be ashamed. he says this, "tom coburn cares about the size and scope of federal government, so do ron johnson and pat toomey, but they just voted for a tax increase, with legislation that was not even publicly available. in other words, they voted for a law that was not even written for them to review. coburn, johnson and toomey might console themselves into thinking they'll now have leverage with the debt ceiling, but their colleagues have already proven themselves unserious on spending cuts." >> and pat, charles krauthammer called last night called a complete surrender. i agree with charles krautham r

krauthammer. what say you, sir? >> well, i think there's one slight detail that dan sr. has been trying to make and i think has been generally overlooked. that is, the existing law was on the books. the fact is, this is unusual circumstances to have a law that gives the president what he really wants, which is a tax increase. we could have said, fine, we're going to allow taxes to go up on all americans. i thought that's a bad idea. i don't think you can solve this problem with tax increases. so what we did is we spared as many americans as we possibly could from a tax increase, and we never had any leverage on spending. i want to correct something that congressman van hollen said. the president's proposal, if you remember, was over $1 trillion in tax increases, and then the $1 trillion in so-called spending cuts, which were never specified, we're going to turn off the sequester for ten years. there was no spending cut. and by the way, the president also wanted an unlimited debt ceiling increase. that's just, that was clearly somebody who was quite happy to go over the fiscal cliff. our opportunity here is on the debt ceiling.

the president's made it very clear. he doesn't haven't want to have a discussion about it, because he knows, this is where we have leverage. we republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean, and insist that we will get off the road to greece. because that's a road we're on right now. we can only solve this problem by getting spending around control and restructuring the entitlement programs. there is no tax solution to this. it's a spending solution. and this president doesn't want to go there. we're going to have to force it. and we're going to have to force it over the debt ceiling. >> so, pat, i can't agree with you on one point. and that is that we have been overlooking dan seymour, but he's so easily ignored. >> i tend to make an effort. >> senator, i want to pursue -- >> this guy has been right. >> mark and then sam. >> right if you like crazy taxes and $4 trillion in -- >> he cut taxes. >> right, in a ryan kind of way. >> senator, i want to pursue

this debt ceiling issue with you. you said it could cause the government shutdown, but it could also cause a downgrade of u.s. credit, could cause market chaos. are you willing to do all those things if the president says, that's not part of the debate? >> let me tell you what, i am absolutely convinced the downgrade comes when the market sees an inability to fund the situation we're in. that's the problem. a temporary disruption because we have to furlough to workers at the department of education or close down some national parks or not cut the grass on the mall. you know, that's no optimal. it's disruptive. but it's a hell of a lot better than the path that we're on and the crisis we're going to have if we think we can keep giving this president unlimited debt. look, he got a $2 trillion debt limit increase just 17 months ago, blew through all of that. and there's another thing i want to correct. which is this notion that giving the president additional debt ceiling increase is about past

spending, it's not. it's to enable him to engage in the future spending he wants. that's why we've got to have this fight over the debt ceiling. >> sam stein, jump in. >> i quibble with the idea that you just wouldn't cut the grass. but i want to talk about an aspect of what happened. i got my hands on the actual legislative language of the bill yesterday afternoon and it bore me to death, and there's no way i could read through it without falling asleep. i'm wondering, did you read the legislative language of the bill before voting on it and how many of your colleagues actually read the bill before voting on it? >> my staff and i were poring through it and were looking at it section by section. >> do you think it's a problem that lawmakers are getting about maybe ten hours, tops, of lead time to look -- >> it's a huge problem. look, this is ridiculous. it's absolutely ridiculous. but i would argue, this goes back to the dysfunctional senate we have, largely. the house passed a budget the last two years. and i think -- and senate republicans have put budgets on the senate floor. if any one of them were

operative, we'd be on a sustainable path right now. but senator reid and the democratic majority think that it's acceptable not to even have is a budget. so we have no budget, we don't do any appropriation bill, so not one appropriation bill was brought to the senate floor this year. so no wonder our back's up against the wall at midnight and we get this terrible deal that's thrown in our laps that nobody's had enough chance to look at. it's because we haven't gone through a proper, sensible process in the first place. >> john cassidy, what's it take to make that happen? >> the thing that strike mess about this whole thing is yesterday we had the liberals furious about it, tom harking and people, today we've got the right-wing republicans furious. it's classic obama. he's taken two extremes and cut right down the middle. he's not getting any praise from any of the real sort of networks. that's what he does. it's too early to say how it's

going to play out. >> now the president has his trophy, he's got the tax increase that current law gave him. that solves about 6% of the deficit problem over the next ten years. congratulations, mr. president. could we finally begin to address the 94% of the problem that some of us and republicans have been talking about for a long time? but this president wants nothing to do with that. we've got to force that discussion on whatever vehicle we can. >> pat, chris van hollen says we need to raise taxes more. >> and he's totally wrong. we're totally done. eck you can't solve this problem -- i don't care how much you raise taxes. you know that, i know that, we will only solve this problem when we finally get the spending under control. and the debt ceiling, and after that, the continuing resolution expiration, those are the vehicles that give us the opportunity to insist on making progress. >> we'll be able to see a lot better after we go through the debt ceiling. the important thing we see

there, there is at least some willing bs in congress to take us over the debt ceiling. that's a much bigger deal than the fiscal cliff. like we saw in 2010, when the stock market went down 16% in a couple of weeks, if there's a real possibility of us going over the debt ceiling without an increase, there could be a debt downgrade, as mark said, there could be a big financial crisis. we'll be in much better shape in a couple of months to assess where we are. >> maybe there's more leverage there. senator pat toomey, thank you. get some sleep. >> thanks for having me, guys. >> you and dan and paul ryan go off and figure out -- >> he's got blue chip club for growth predictions. >> and they were shattered last night in a sad, hastily written -- i'm joking, pat. i love you. i'm just bitter -- >> thanks for coming on. up next, how the markets will respond to the deal in washington. cnbc's brian sullivan next on "morning joe."

let's get to business before the bell with cnbc's brian sullivan. brian, how's this going to shape out for the markets? >> happy new year. looks like we were going out like a lion and in like a lion. futures predicting a pretty solid open for the s&p and nasdaq. the markets like that a deal was done. was it perfect? far from it, but uncertainty is the hobgoblin of stocks. so enjoy the next couple of months, but it should be a higher open for the u.s. equity markets today, guys. >> all right, brian, thank you so much. >> brian, happy new year. do you have a resolution, brian? >> be nicer to mika. >> that's a good resolution. >> but not joe. >> that goes without saying. >> do you love brian?

>> that's nobody's resolution. >> smile more, actually. smile more. >> i don't have to say i love brian, because i'm not going to trash him for being part of the destructive process that raised the national debt $4 trillion while hiking taxes at the same time. brian sullivan, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it and thank you for not being part of the lowering of the american flag. you know, i think freedom died last night. we'll be right back! tch out for. with so much noise about health care... i tuned it all out. with unitedhealthcare, i get information that matters... my individual health profile. not random statistics. they even reward me for addressing my health risks. so i'm doing fine... but she's still going to give me a heart attack. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. i just got started and i'm like "hey, that first 20 came off,

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